Dream weaver

"To me, Tamika has this pie that's sliced up, and every piece has a goal on it," says Fever coach Nell Fortner. "She looks at the pie every day and goes, 'OK, here's another one I got. There are four over there that I've still got to work for.' She's so goal-driven. It's a really neat thing, but she's incredibly humble about all of it."

Catchings' basketball life began in a simple yet extraordinary way - her father, Harvey Catchings, played in the NBA.

"I did start playing basketball because of my dad - always going to the gym and going to practice," she says. "I loved to be around him, and I loved to be around the game."

By the third grade she was on an organized team. Her older brother, Kenyon, was also an avid player. Older sister Tauja, while enormously talented, simply followed the family trend.

"She played because I wanted to play," Catchings says. "It got to a point as we got older where we would trade time. I would play Barbie dolls with her for an hour, and she would play basketball with me for an hour.

"I loved to play basketball, so it wasn't a point of me wanting to do anything or play anything else," she continues.

Catchings, 24, admits her early life was a bit sheltered, as virtually everyone she knew had a connection to the NBA. When his U.S. pro career came to a close, Harvey Catchings played a season in Italy, and then the family returned home to Chicago to start a new life.

"That's when we started to realize there's life outside of basketball," she says. "We'd tell our friends, 'Our dad used to play in the NBA.' It was like they were in awe. We didn't understand it at the time."

In the seventh grade, Catchings started to plot her own future.

"That's when I made the decision I was going to play professional basketball," she states. "I was like, 'I'm going to get at least a tryout with the NBA. By the time I'm out of college, I should be able to play with the guys.' That was my dream."

But in accordance with the motto "dreams do come true, but they don't come easy," Catchings had some challenges to deal with. Her parents divorced. Sensing her mother, Wanda, was unhappy and wanted to move from Chicago to the Dallas area, where her family lived, she offered to make the move with her. It was the summer before her junior year of high school. Brother Kenyon was already in college, and sister Tauja was entering her senior year of high school, thus making a move for her nearly impossible.

"One day I just came home and I said, 'Mom, I'm ready to move,'" Catchings recalls. "She had talked about it a little bit, but she never said, 'We're going to move.' She wanted it to be my decision. She asked, 'Are you sure? Think about it.' I was like, 'I've already thought about it. I'm ready to go.'

"I was on an AAU team, and AAU Nationals were in Texas that year," she adds. "We went down for AAU and started looking for a place to live."

While she was steadfast in her desire to be there for her mother, the move was traumatic. Catchings is hearing impaired and she felt somewhat isolated from other people. She often forged her connection with others via Tauja.

"Before we moved to Texas, I never really talked to anybody," she says. "I never had my own friends. My freshmen year in high school, my brother was a senior and my sister was a sophomore. We were all at the same school together. My friends were his friends or her friends. I didn't have anybody in my grade, other than one person, that I used to hang out with. Tauja was our spokesperson. Somebody would ask me a question, Tauja would answer. If I had to go somewhere, Tauja had to go somewhere.

"When I moved to Texas, I had to start over," she continues. "I had to be by myself. I had to do things on my own. It was something that I accepted."

Easing the way was basketball. Not only did her high school team appreciate her prolific contributions, but also numerous college coaches came calling. The letters - which Catchings carefully catalogued - filled two large bins.

"I had an idea where I wanted to go, but I wanted to be real open and look at a lot of different schools," she says. "Once I started narrowing my list down, I started writing letters to coaches to let them know, 'Thank you for looking at me but unfortunately I'm not interested.'

"I wanted it to be a good school academically. I wanted to play for the best coach. I wanted to play alongside players who could play. Those were the three main things I looked at."

She considered Illinois, where Tauja was, but ultimately chose the University of Tennessee. When she got there, she found out what it means to play for Pat Summitt.

"Up until my first day of practice, I had never had anybody tell me that I was doing anything wrong," Catchings says. "They might make suggestions but never said I was doing something wrong. The first day of practice, Pat said, 'You're playing defense wrong.' At the time I was thinking, I can't believe I'm about to spend four years of my life here. But that was the best decision I could make."

Indeed, her freshman year was electrifying. The team, which also included Chamique Holdsclaw and Semeka Randall, won a National Championship.

"We worked hard as a team but we had fun," Catchings notes. "We would go to practice and basically kill each other but it was fun. That's what kept us motivated. We were having so much fun, and we were learning so much from each other, we wanted to go to practice. We wanted to stay at the gym."

Catchings also developed a healthy rivalry with teammate Randall (now a member of the San Antonio Silver Stars) that continues to this day. They competed to see who could get the best grades. Then they competed to see who could graduate early. Both finished their undergraduate course work a semester early and enrolled in graduate school. Nowadays they're challenging each other to see who can finish grad school first, but at present both are kept away from Tennessee by their pro careers.

In January of her senior year, Catchings tore the ACL in her right knee.

"I was very upset when it first happened. Then after going to the doctor and confirming it, I looked at the situation," she says. "I told my teammates that of all the people on my team, I'm glad that it happened to me. It's not that I would want it to happen, but I felt out of all of us, I felt that I was the strongest. For it to happen to me, it would push other people to achieve what they might not have been able to achieve with me out there on the court."

She realized her dream of pro basketball might not become a reality. Although she did everything possible to rehab her knee and forge a pro career, she also allowed herself to think about ways she could stay connected to the sport in other capacities.

Fortunately, Fortner had no hesitation where Catchings was concerned and picked her in the 2001 WNBA draft.

"I knew her daily work ethic and her competitiveness," says Fortner, who in addition to being well-acguainted with the Lady Vols coaching staff had firsthand experience coaching Catchings when she was a member of a Jones Cup team. "She was the player I wanted from the get-go. If we would have had the number one pick (the Fever picked third), I would have taken her.

"I knew she would bound back from that injury," she continues. "We're building a franchise and she is a franchise player."

That year spent on the bench allowed Catchings to soak in exactly what it took to play in the WNBA. She knew what aspects of her game needed attention.

"I stayed in Indiana that whole off-season, and I was in the weight room a good three or four days every week," Catchings says. "WNBA players are so much more physically strong and quick. I hated the weights through college, but I knew I would have to get in the weight room and I did."

Also serving as a motivator was an invitation to try out for the National Team that would represent the U.S. at the World Championships.

She tested out her playing skills with the Chicago Blaze of the NWBL. Then she headed to National Team training camp, where veterans such as Lisa Leslie, Dawn Staley and Sheryl Swoopes gave her constructive criticism about her game.

Her rookie WNBA season yielded stellar results. After averaging 18.6 points, 8.6 rebounds, 3.7 assists and 2.94 steals per game, Catchings was voted 2002 Rookie of the Year. She was also named All WNBA First Team. And she led the Fever to its first playoff berth.

The stats are all the more impressive when it's noted that Catchings suffered a broken nose midway through the season and played wearing a mask.

"It's just a part of the game," she says. "I love to play basketball so much, and I had waited so long for that opportunity to play in the WNBA that it didn't matter what happened. I could have gotten knocked out - I was going to come out and keep playing. That was my dream and I was going to do anything and everything to make sure that I could do it."

Not only did Catchings play on the U.S. World Championship team that won gold in China, but she also was a starter. She describes the experience as an honor and overwhelming.

"It's something she worked incredibly hard for," Fortner says. "To see the smile on her face was very refreshing."

After the World Championships Catchings returned to Indianapolis, which is now her permanent home base, having bought a home there. She had planned to stay put until the 2003 WNBA season but instead accepted an offer to play for two and a half months in Seoul, Korea. Given the quick style of play in Korea, it allowed her to fine-tune her defense. And given the presence of several WNBA players in Korea - Chamique Holdsclaw, Michelle Snow, Tina Thompson, Tiffani Johnson, Alisa Burras and Sylvia Crawley - she could engage in ongoing competition against people she'd play in the U.S.

There were 20 games in two and a half months and a championship for her team, WOORI Bank.

Then back to Indianapolis, where her sister is her housemate. Living close by is Caterings' boyfriend of six years, Del Baker, a former basketball player at Tennessee.

"Since he did play basketball, he knows what it's like," Catchings says. "He understands the lifestyle of an athlete. When I'm on the court, I can see him over there cheering. It feels good to know you have a special someone in your life who supports you and that's going to stand by you. But he's not afraid to tell me if he sees something wrong. Everyone else can be saying, 'Great game,' and he'll tell me, 'You need to do this and that.' Sometimes you need to hear that."

All part of her goal is to constantly improve herself.

"When I retire, I want people to say, 'From her rookie season to 10, 15, 20 years down the road, she improved dramatically every year,'" she states.

She thrives on working with Fortner, whom she calls "a motivating coach."

Fortner would say Catchings requires little motivating.

"Tamika does everything the same in her life," says Fortner. "She loves the game of basketball, and she gives everything she can to it. She's incredibly competitive. She loves people. She gives everything she can to people. She's the same off the floor as she is on it, outside of the physicality part. She just gives her all. That's one thing that separates her from most people."

In the immediate future, Catchings has her sights set on the 2004 Olympics. She will also give her all to making the WNBA a great success.

"This is what I love to do," she says simply. "I don't want to ever underachieve."

Copyright Ashton International Media, Inc. Oct 2003
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved